20 Nov 2019

Missouri: Appellate Court Agrees No Causal Connection Between Tinnitus and Work-Related Fight

In spite of what the Missouri appellate court said was a “poorly written” opinion by an ALJ (adopted and incorporated by the state’s Labor & Industrial Relations Commission), a state appellate court panel held there was still more than sufficient evidence to affirm the denial of workers’ compensation benefits to a worker who claimed his tinnitus condition was causally connected to a work-related fight that broke out between the claimant/worker and a co-worker. The claimant sustained admitted injuries to his face and head in the fight, but the appellate court noted, he did not seek benefits for tinnitus until three years later, after he had secured social security disability benefits. The court observed that the tinnitus had not been mentioned in claimant’s social security preceding and the employer’s expert had completely contradicted the expert offered by the claimant.

Thomas A. Robinson, J.D., the Feature National Columnist for the LexisNexis Workers’ Compensation eNewsletter, is co-author of Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law (LexisNexis).

LexisNexis Online Subscribers: Citations below link to Lexis Advance.

See Schlereth v. Aramark Uniform Servs., 2019 Mo. App. LEXIS 1766 (Nov. 12, 2019)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 130.05.

Source: Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, the nation’s leading authority on workers’ compensation law

For a more detailed discussion of the case, see